The Last Lament
by Iellix
Summary: In his final moments, his last thoughts and his last lament are all, predictably, for them. Takes place during 3.12, one-shot.


In the wake of the third series finale, I'm kind of in shock. Some of it I pretty well expected. But not all of it! I've never been emotional at death scenes but for whatever reason, this one bothered me. I'm still not completely sure why. (I suspect a small part of it is that Allan dies thinking that his friends think he's a traitor again.)

Disclaimer: Any of the characters mentioned here I claim no ownership of.

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o…o

He thinks about death a great deal.

Allan a-Dale is a man who simply never expected to live out his life. He always knew that, in the end, he'd die by a hangman's noose or at the end of a dagger for stealing or scamming or making eyes at another man's wife. He took far too many risks and upset equally too many people to die an old man. And now, living in the forest as an outlaw, it's almost inevitable that he would die a premature death.

So it comes as little surprise to him when the arrows come.

First one, in the leg. The pain is sharp and sudden and shoots up his back and makes him stumble. The others come quickly and hit his back. One, two, three. It's a familiar sound to him—the sound of flesh being pierced and stabbed by a weapon. But he feels nothing. He goes numb all of a sudden, very fast, and his whole body stops working. He collapses in a heap on the forest floor.

He is suddenly and intensely aware of everything around him. The smells of the forest; the sounds of the distant horses and men, he can hear each individual hoofbeat and he thinks he can pinpoint the exact number of men, but such knowledge is useless to him now; the world around him is in sharp focus and moving slowly, slowly.

Breath comes shallow. He is bleeding into his lungs, but he doesn't know that—all he knows is that his chest feels 'full' and heavy and he can't fill his lungs up all the way. His chest gurgles with blood with every attempted and laboured breath.

He's thought about death often, perhaps unhealthily so, and he has always wondered—persistently and quietly and never out loud—what it would be like. If he is going to die like this anyway, then why not wonder? What would he think? How would he feel? Would he feel anything at all? Would he cry? Would he be angry? Would be plead for god's forgiveness?

A year ago, tied up in the desert and left to die in the elements with the rest of them, he couldn't remember thinking about god at all, not even to curse him. He remembered being scared and worried—but not for himself. He was scared for England and what would happen to it with the Black Knights and Prince John and the Sherriff in charge; he felt for Robin and Marian and for Djaq and Will. Strange that a man who'd lived his entire life so self-serving thought of others when faced with death.

But that was a slow death. He had plenty of time. This one was faster, but it seemed that time itself had slowed for him. If he was going to have only minutes to live, something seemed to make sure that they lasted as long as possible.

It's so quiet, is his absent thought. Loudly quiet. He can hear the crunching of the leaves on the forest floor, the wing-beats of the birds that flew overhead—the birds that probably know he's dying and are waiting, waiting. He can even hear his own breath rattling.

He isn't sure what he _expected_ at the very exact moment of his death, but part of him—the only part left capable of strong emotion as the life drained from him—is mildly surprised that nothing _is_ happening at all. There is no trumpet fanfare, no drums, no angels calling his name; he can't hear the voice of god; the ground doesn't split and open and reveal hell below him where the souls of the damned writhe in eternal torment, where he knows he's almost guaranteed to go, for living the last two years of his life doing good deeds won't absolve an entire lifetime of sins.

Death is an anticlimax, he's discovering. He will be alive one moment and dead the next and there is no great theatrics involved.

He doesn't think of an afterlife, of heaven or hell or the eternal consequences of his earthly actions—good and bad alike. He's not thinking about the fact that his friends and comrades—the only family he has left in the world—left him tied up in the camp, convinced he'd betrayed them again. He doesn't think of Kate, either—there was nothing _to_ think about her. Nor does he think about England, knowing that everything is going horribly wrong and that Isabella and Prince John could _win_ and that the entire country could be destroyed. He doesn't even think of _himself._

No.

Instead, perhaps predictably, he thinks of _them._

Hard black eyes and hypnotically pale ones flash in his mind's eye.

They haunt him. Just when he thinks he might be all right, that he might be fine without them in his life, they invade his mind again. They anchored him when they were there and they torment him now that they're gone. He can't even remember how he lived his life without them there at his side.

Will Scarlett was young—scarcely more than a boy when he gave up the humble and honest life of a peasant carpenter to join Robin and fight for what he believed in—but he distinctly remembered thinking that the young man had seen far too much in his short life ever to be wide-eyed again.

And Djaq—strong Djaq, the Saracen beauty, who was the pillar of strength that would never crumble, never fall. She was so strong, and like Will had seen so much in her life and carried so much of it all on her shoulders that it dogged everything she did. She guarded herself always, against everyone—especially him.

They both of them were his opposites, his inverses—so pure and untainted and good and beautiful. Sometimes he wondered why they ever had anything to do with him at all, but they'd always seemed so at home with him and their friendship. There was a time before his betrayal when the three of them had almost been an entity in and of themselves, a part of the larger group but with a completely different and unspoken dynamic between them. He didn't know what it meant then, but now he supposed that perhaps it was a curious and strange kind of love.

He never loved before, not really. He said it often enough—it was usually what _had_ to be said in order to get a woman into bed—but he never meant it. Interesting how the only time he ever felt such a love was when it went unspoken.

But now it is too late—it was too late when he left the gang for Gisbourn, which seems like a lifetime ago. While he was gone, the two of them grew closer and closer together and when he came back he realized that there was no room in that love for him. He told them and he told himself then that he accepted it. He continues to tell himself that he accepts it, over and over again, in the hopes that the more he says it and the more he thinks it, he will believe it and it'll be true.

It's not true, though, and he's figured that out now. Too late, he's figured it out. That's the story of his life: he is always, always too late.

He wants to see them again, just one last time. He wants to gather her into his arms and hold her tightly and kiss her all over her dark cheeks and tell her that he lied when he said his infatuation was shallow and fleeting and there was nothing to come of what he felt for her, and tell her that loves her, he loves her, and he wishes he could have said something of it before so that at least he wouldn't die and she would never know of it.

He wants to do the same to him, too, and now that the end is near Allan feels no shame in it because shame would be a waste of the moments he has left. He wants to grasp his one-time comrade by the shoulders kiss him, too, just once—and tell him that finally he knows what it all means and that he loves _him_ and not in the way comrades in arms love one another. He loves him far more and he loves him differently than the world would say was appropriate for a man to feel for another man.

It's all just a wish, though. There is no time left, there's nothing. He will never, ever see them again and they will never, ever know how much he loves them. They will never know just how much they meant and how much they _still_ mean to him. They will never know that his dying moments are a lament about _them,_ that they will remain forever ignorant of it all.

He should be angry, he should use the last of his breath to loose a cry of anguish.

But a funny thing happens instead.

He lets them go.

There is no hurt and no anger and no sense of betrayal that they, the two people he loved in the world more than anybody else, abandoned him for one another. No anger that he will never see them again. No pain that he will never be able to tell them just how deep his love for them went and still goes right up until death. No sense of loss.

He just lets them go.

Everything is numb now; he feels nothing, not hot or cold or pain or anything. And the forest around him that had been so sharp and clear only moments ago is now fading and blurring. The colour is drained from the scene around him and everything has gone dull and dusky grey. He can hear nothing, not the horses in the distance or the vultures that are waiting for him. His breaths are shallower and it's harder still to fill his lungs.

He is dying, and he doesn't care.

It isn't 'a good day to die'—he's not sure such a thing exists—but Allan a-Dale, who has always expected to die unnaturally just this way, is ready for it.

And he welcomes death.

o…o

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Maybe I'm just emotional, but that was kind of painful to write. Allan!! I'm still upset! Robin and Guy I was expecting would probably die, so their deaths didn't get to me as much as Allan's. The OT3 between him and Djaq and Will is going to remain forever unresolved.


End file.
